We've evolved into such an emotional country; logic has never been our strong suit. Society, in general, is naturally conditioned to play it by heart. When Gene Roddenberry created a character that made decisions based strictly on stone-cold reason, he had to hail from another planet. See, no human could ever pull off Mr. Spock. Our rage gets in the way.
Today, the NCAA sought to rewrite history because they don't like who Joe Paterno turned out to be. So the winningest college coach of all time was a ruthless scumbag? Deal with it. Hate him. Spit on his grave and take down the statue. But you can't magically make him the 14th winningest coach in college football because of his criminal choices.
In America, we often have trouble separating the art from the artist. Had OJ been convicted of the double-murder, how asinine would it have been if the NFL stripped him of the yards he rushed for? If Michael Jackson was found guilty of child molestation, should he have forfeited his Grammys? Pete Rose is a lying degenerate gambler, a fraud and a felon. But what if Bart Giamatti tried to take Pete's hits away as punishment? It sounds ridiculous, but that's what the NCAA just did.
Paterno always struck me as a cagey fuck, although none of us could've fathomed the events of the past eight months. Hope he burns in hell, to put it mildly. But I have no use for symbolic punishments. Those victories were legitimately earned on the football field by players who almost surely would've busted up Sandusky faster than you can say "We are Penn State." And the NCAA cheapened their accomplishments, in a revisionist morality power play, by attempting to vacate wins. Illogical, captain.
